This will delete all files in a directory matching a pattern in one line of code.
<?php array_map('unlink', glob("some/dir/*.txt")); ?>
(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)
unlink — Supprime un fichier
Supprime filename. Similaire à la fonction Unix C
unlink().
En cas d'échec, une alerte de niveau E_WARNING sera générée.
filenameChemin vers le fichier.
Si le fichier est un lien symbolique, le lien symbolique sera supprimé. Sur Windows, pour supprimer un lien symbolique vers un dossier, rmdir() doit être utilisé à la place.
contextNote: Une resource de contexte de flux.
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 7.3.0 | Sur Windows, il est désormais possible de unlink() les fichiers dont les gestionnaires sont utilisés, ce qui auparavant échouait. Cependant, il n'est toujours pas possible de recréer le fichier supprimé, jusqu'à ce que tous ses gestionnaires soient fermés. |
Exemple #1 Exemple avec unlink()
<?php
$fh = fopen('test.html', 'a');
fwrite($fh, '<h1>Hello world!</h1>');
fclose($fh);
unlink('test.html');
?>This will delete all files in a directory matching a pattern in one line of code.
<?php array_map('unlink', glob("some/dir/*.txt")); ?>Deleted a large file but seeing no increase in free space or decrease of disk usage? Using UNIX or other POSIX OS?
The unlink() is not about removing file, it's about removing a file name. The manpage says: ``unlink - delete a name and possibly the file it refers to''.
Most of the time a file has just one name -- removing it will also remove (free, deallocate) the `body' of file (with one caveat, see below). That's the simple, usual case.
However, it's perfectly fine for a file to have several names (see the link() function), in the same or different directories. All the names will refer to the file body and `keep it alive', so to say. Only when all the names are removed, the body of file actually is freed.
The caveat:
A file's body may *also* be `kept alive' (still using diskspace) by a process holding the file open. The body will not be deallocated (will not free disk space) as long as the process holds it open. In fact, there's a fancy way of resurrecting a file removed by a mistake but still held open by a process...unlink($fileName); failed for me .
Then i tried using the realpath($fileName) function as
unlink(realpath($fileName)); it worked
just posting it , in case if any one finds it useful .Here the simplest way to delete files with mask
<?php
$mask = "*.jpg"
array_map( "unlink", glob( $mask ) );
?>I have been working on some little tryout where a backup file was created before modifying the main textfile. Then when an error is thrown, the main file will be deleted (unlinked) and the backup file is returned instead.
Though, I have been breaking my head for about an hour on why I couldn't get my persmissions right to unlink the main file.
Finally I knew what was wrong: because I was working on the file and hadn't yet closed the file, it was still in use and ofcourse couldn't be deleted :)
So I thought of mentoining this here, to avoid others of making the same mistake:
<?php
// First close the file
fclose($fp);
// Then unlink :)
unlink($somefile);
?>To delete all files of a particular extension, or infact, delete all with wildcard, a much simplar way is to use the glob function. Say I wanted to delete all jpgs .........
<?php
foreach (glob("*.jpg") as $filename) {
echo "$filename size " . filesize($filename) . "\n";
unlink($filename);
}
?>To anyone who's had a problem with the permissions denied error, it's sometimes caused when you try to delete a file that's in a folder higher in the hierarchy to your working directory (i.e. when trying to delete a path that starts with "../").
So to work around this problem, you can use chdir() to change the working directory to the folder where the file you want to unlink is located.
<?php
$old = getcwd(); // Save the current directory
chdir($path_to_file);
unlink($filename);
chdir($old); // Restore the old working directory
?>This might seem obvious, but I was tearing my hair out with this problem - make sure the file you're trying to delete isn't currently being used. I had a script that was parsing a text file and was supposed to delete it after completing, but kept getting a permission denied error because I hadn't explicitly closed the file, hence it was technically still being "used" even though the parsing was complete.